


I’ll Come Running When You Call Out my Name

by CalistaWon



Series: Can't Be Herself When She's Somebody Else [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Coming Out, Eret Being the Best, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Supportive Eret, They/Them Pronouns for Eret (Video Blogging RPF), This is a lot less angsty than it was originally going to be, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Trans TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), lesbianinnit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29835105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalistaWon/pseuds/CalistaWon
Summary: “You know,” Eret says, “when I was first figuring out my gender identity, before I’d asked anyone to try using different pronouns for me, I would paint my nails.”“Uh,” Tommy has no idea what Eret is trying to say or where the hell they’re going with this. “What?”…Tommy starts questioning his (her?) gender and Eret helps.(Prequel to "Can't Be Herself When She's Somebody Else" but can be read as a stand-alone.)
Relationships: Eret & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: Can't Be Herself When She's Somebody Else [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165433
Comments: 18
Kudos: 549
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	I’ll Come Running When You Call Out my Name

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! The prequel is finally here!
> 
> *This is the prequel to “Can’t Be Herself When She’s Somebody Else” but it can be read as a stand-alone.
> 
> (If any CCs say they don't like this type of work, I will take it down! I’m still a bit new to the fandom so let me know if there’s anything in the fic that the cc’s wouldn’t like. I don’t think there is (there shouldn’t be) but just in case! Thanks!)
> 
> Clementine’s irl friends in this (even though they’re only there at the very beginning) are all OCs because, though Tommy has mentioned his friends (with real and fake names) before, I don’t know what their thoughts on being in fanfiction are so I didn’t want to use them, just in case! 
> 
> Title from [My Love Won’t Let You Down](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV9oCbxKotQ) by Little Mix. 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> -Cal
> 
> Warnings:  
> Use of deadname and wrong pronouns (because Clementine still hasn’t figured herself out yet at the beginning), feelings of dysphoria.

It starts with his college friends and a dare, of all things. Tommy’s at his friend Ollie’s house, with Klara and James, and they’ve managed to get bored playing video games. Tommy isn’t sure how that’s even  _ possible _ . After about the seventh time that Klara has won MarioKart, though, they decide to call it. 

“Right, that’s it,” James grumbles, taking the lead. 

“You’re just a sore loser,” Klara teases. Ollie giggles.

“I mean, I’m definitely not going to  _ deny _ that,” James jokes. “But seriously, I’m done.”

They end up moving from the living room to Ollie’s room, where he suggests, “We should do truth or dare!”

“What?” Tommy asks. “Is this a middle school slumber party now?”

“Now hold on, Tom,” James grins, “this sounds great!”

“Oh god,” Klara groans, “we’re doing this, aren’t we?”

“No! We are  _ not _ ,” Tommy’s heart isn’t really in his argument. It does seem kind of fun, not that he’ll ever admit that out loud. 

“Yes, we are,” Ollie turns to James, putting his hands on the other boy’s shoulders and staring seriously into his eyes. “James, truth or dare?”

They go around doing dares and admitting secrets. At one point, Tommy chooses truth and Klara asks him what the hell he does in his spare time because, “seriously, you’re always busy.”

That’s how Tommy learns that somehow, neither Klara nor James knew before today that Tommy is one of the fastest-growing Twitch streamers and he’s got millions of subscribers on YouTube. How they never knew before is beyond him. People talk to him about it at college! People come up to him for pictures! 

His friends become insistent on watching some of his videos. Listen, he isn’t embarrassed about his content, but he… well, he’s not sure  _ why _ , but he doesn't really want to watch himself be all “Big Man Tommy” right now. He’s been feeling that a lot lately, which is weird because he actually enjoys his online persona. It’s just a part of his real-life self, after all. But recently, something has just felt… off. 

“Fine, okay. We’ll drop it,” Klara says.  _ Thank god _ , Tommy thinks, only for the relief to disappear as a terrifying grin spreads across his friend’s face, “ _ if  _ you do this dare.”

“Side note!” James jumps in. “We will seriously seriously drop it if you want us to but-”

“No, no,” Tommy interrupts. “What’s the dare?” Even if there  _ wasn’t  _ an ultimatum, Tommy isn’t one to back down from a challenge. 

And that’s how he ends up in the bathroom, struggling into one of Ollie’s sister’s skirts. He’s already got red lipstick on, courtesy of Klara. 

When he’s finally managed to get the skirt on, he looks at himself in the full-length mirror attached to the bathroom door. Frowning, he tucks his grey shirt into the blue, knee-length skirt. ‘ _ That’s better _ ,’ he thinks, taking another look, then, ‘ _ oh, I look  _ good’. The lipstick is a little too vibrant for this look and the skirt doesn’t sit on his hips like it’s probably meant to but none of that matters. Tommy looks great. Tommy feels great, too, though he can’t figure out  _ why.  _ He feels…  _ pretty _ . 

As part of the dare, he stays in the skirt until he has to leave. He pretends to complain but in reality? He doesn’t mind it. And when his friends tease. When they call him a girl. When they use  _ she  _ and  _ her  _ to refer to him. He doesn’t care. In fact, though he doesn’t realize it right now, he enjoys it. 

Tommy’s parents won’t be home for hours. He doesn’t have any plans to stream or film. He’s been wanting to do this since truth or dare, but he hasn’t had the time. Right now is the perfect opportunity.

His parents’ bathroom is well organized, so finding his mother’s makeup isn’t difficult. He grabs a tube of lipstick, pulls off the cap, brings it to his lips and-

He catches his own eyes in the mirror.

He freezes.

He can’t- why can’t he breathe? Fuck! What is he doing? What if his parents come home? What if he can’t take it off properly and he’s left with it smudged all over his lips? What if his mom notices her lipstick has been used? What if somebody tries to video call him? What if… what if…? 

He hates that he’s so scared. He  _ wants  _ to do this. He wants so desperately to try the lipstick but he-

_ He _ . 

Everything suddenly feels very, very wrong. It takes everything in him to be able to put the cap back on the lipstick and to make his way back to his room. Once there, he doesn't even make it to the bed. He ends up sitting with his back against his closed door. The breaths he takes are deep but don’t feel like they’re properly filling his lungs. 

His parents find him in the same spot when they return home several hours later.

Tommy has done some research. Lots of it, in fact. Tommy has also done an absurd number of online quizzes. He’s still a little confused. A lot confused. 

So he pushes it to the back of his mind. He tries to forget about it. He’s got more important things to deal with. So what if he feels like shit sometimes? (Most times). So what if he feels  _ wrong _ ? 

“Hey, Tommy, do you mind staying in the vc with me for a second? I have a question for you.”

“Uh, sure thing, Eret.”

They both say goodbye to Tubbo, Jack, and Niki, waiting until their friends leave the call. Only Jack and Eret had actually been streaming but they both ended their streams an hour ago. They’d all just stayed to chat with each other afterward. 

“Alright, what do you need to ask me?” Tommy asks, genuinely curious. 

“Just… are you alright, Tommy?”

“Um, what? Of course I am!” Tommy responds faux-enthusiastically. His heart isn’t in it, even though he wants it to be. “Is that all?”

“Oh, no,” Eret pauses for a moment. “I also wanted- You went rather quiet when we were talking about me wearing dresses and skirts and heels on stream. I just wanted to make sure we’re still… okay?”

Leave it to Eret to actually be confident enough to ask that in the first place. Tommy grimaces, though, tensing up. He didn’t mean to make Eret feel bad. Fuck. 

“Of course we’re still okay!” Tommy quickly assures his friend. “Of course.”

Eret chuckles a bit. “Okay. Thank you, Tommy.”

“Right, yeah. Of course.”

There’s a longer pause than before. Tommy fidgets with his fingers in his lap. He opens his mouth to say goodbye but Eret speaks before Tommy can. 

“You know,” they say, “when I was first figuring out my gender, before I’d asked anyone to try using different pronouns for me, I would paint my nails.” 

“Uh,” Tommy has no idea what Eret is trying to say or where the hell they’re going with this. “What?”

“Nail varnish. It’s not as difficult as makeup can be and not as expensive and conspicuous as say, dresses and skirts. As someone who doesn’t think they have great fashion sense, doing my nails helped.”

“Okay?” Tommy’s shaking. Eret can’t know, can he? Defensively, Tommy all but snaps, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Just making conversation,” Eret says. Tommy imagines them holding their hands up in some sort of surrender. “Anyway, before I was confident enough to use actual colours, I would use clear varnish.  _ I  _ would know it was there, and it did have some shine, but it wouldn’t be obvious, you know?”

“Um… alright.”

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Eret says. “Just thought it was interesting, is all. I mean, now I’m comfortable enough to put on a dress  _ live!  _ It’s nice to see how far I’ve come.” 

So maybe Tommy goes out and buys clear nail varnish afterwards. Fuck off. 

The first time he tries it, it’s utter shit. He gets nail varnish all over the skin of his fingers, it’s all thick and clumpy on his nails, and he accidentally gets some on his desk. It’s also only after he’s had a near breakdown over the damn stuff that he remembers he has nothing to remove the varnish with. 

“Fuck,” he groans, looking at the absolute disaster he’s just created. Heaving a sigh, he makes his way to his parents’ room. Neither of them are home, thank god. He carefully rummages through his mother’s things - once again thankful for her organization - hoping to find… aha! There it is. Nail varnish remover. 

The nail varnish comes off easily, but the smell of the remover is awful. It’s enough to make Tommy light-headed, so he throws open the window. 

It’s not until a few days later that he tries again. 

Eret answers right away.

“Hey Tommy,” they greet. “What’s up?”

“Video call?”

“Sure.”

Tommy holds the varnish up in front of the camera, heart beating fast. “Help?”  
Eret walks Tommy through what to do by painting their own nails black at the same time. It takes a lot more patience than Tommy had expected, with long, quick brush strokes and careful concentration. He still gets some varnish on his skin, but his nails turn out much better than last time. 

“So,” Eret says while they both wait for their nails to dry. “Can I ask?”

Tommy bites his lip. “I don’t think I’m a-” he’s done pretending it’s not real. Done pretending that nothing is happening. “Eret I’m a girl!” he - no  _ she _ \- blurts.

There’s a second of silence in which Tommy almost hangs up, but then Eret says, “Okay. Does that mean you’d like to use she and her pronouns?”  
“Um,” Tommy hasn’t ever tested it out, really, but, “yes please.”

“Sure thing, Big Woman,” Tommy grins at Eret’s words. “Do you have another name you’d like to use?”

“Oh shit! I have to think of one!”

“I mean, you aren’t required to-”

“No! No, I want to.”

“I came out to my parents!”

“What? Tommy, that’s great!” A hum. “Wait, that is great, right?”

“Yes! Mum said she would lend me dresses if I wasn’t so tall,” Tommy says, giddy. “And my father said the only reason he might stop loving me is if I murdered somebody or committed a hate crime or something.”

Eret laughs. “I’m glad! Your parents love you. You’ll always be their child, Tommy.”

“About that! It isn’t Tommy anymore!”

“Oh?”

“Let me introduce myself properly.”

“Alright?”

She clears her throat, making a show of it. A big smile spreads across her face and grandly, she announces, “My name is Clementine Innit, the Biggest Woman to Ever Exist.”

“Clementine?”

“Yeah, but you can call me Clem,” Clem lowers her energy a little and sincerely asks, “Do you think it’s alright?”

“Well, does it feel right?”

“Yes.”

‘Then it’s a perfect name, Clementine.”

“Clementine!” her mother shouts. “You’ve received a package!”

Strange. Clem hasn’t ordered anything recently. She rushes downstairs and her mother hands her the box. It’s fairly big, but rather flat. Clem wonders what it could possibly be. Another package from Dream? No, he would have told her if he was sending anything. It wasn’t heavy enough to be another YouTube play button. 

When she gets back to her room, Clem decides she might as well vlog this. She enjoys vlogging and the mystery package seems interesting enough. 

“Boys!” She shouts into the camera. “MotherInnit just informed me that I received a package and I have  _ no idea  _ what it could  _ possibly  _ be, so I’m vlogging.”

She props the camera up and cuts into the box. She can do a proper intro later if she needs to. Inside the box is something soft, wrapped in tissue paper. Unravelling it from the paper, she holds it up and-

“Oh.”

It’s a dress. A blue one with a high neckline and t-shirt-like sleeves. 

She glances at the camera, which is still recording. “Um. I’m just gonna… yeah,” she turns it off. 

Later, after showing the dress off to her parents and twirling around in it several times, she sends the video and a picture of herself in the dress to Eret.

**Clementine:**

Thank you

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this! I barely edited it so if you catch any grammar/spelling mistakes, let me know! 
> 
> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> -Cal
> 
> (ps. there may or may not be another work in this series coming out soon! Surprise!)


End file.
